The forecast predicted fog and below zero temperatures in the Rhön Mountains, and a quick look at the Schwarzes Moor Parking webcam confirmed white conditions – yeah! Off we went right after breakfast…
Of course, in good old German fashion, the Schwarzes Moor Nature Trail is closed in winter (Nov 15 – Mar 15) to protect us stupid citizens from ourselves as we could slip in winter conditions… but hey, all around is beautiful nature, too, especially under those conditions! We had all this to ourselves, not a single other soul in sight… What a wonderful day we had – we didn’t mind the small icy particles in the air driven by the ice cold wind at all! I was just glad that my OM-1 and the 12-100 are all I need, and they are perfectly safe in this weather. Towards the end of our walk I did switch to the Pana-Leica 9mm for a few photographs when we found a quiet corner in the forest to change the lens 😉 Afterwards driving down the mountains the white area disappeared and we were back in typical German grey winter… but found great comfort when having a tasty meal in a well-known Rhön-Trout Restaurant near Gersfeld (Forellenhof Wahl in Altenfeld, open Friday, Saturday, Sunday 11-20)…
For more photographs (and in bigger resolution) please visit the „Schwarzes Moor“ gallery…
For many years now we have been visiting the Rhön Mountains, which are only a 1 hour drive from our home. A little higher up near the Hochrhönstrasse, a road that takes you right across the center high region of the Rhön, there is the „Red Moor“ / Rotes Moor – a rised bog that develops over thousands of years, and which has for many years been exploited (like everywhere in Germany and Europe), drained out to harvest peat and gain dry land for farming. Fortunately this trend has been stopped a few decades ago, and a few moors have been saved, re-naturalized and turned into protected nature reserves. Like the Red Moor. (Nearby a little higher up is also the Black Moor).
Now we have been there many times, in various seasons, but two weeks ago the weather forecast indicated early snow in the Rhön mountains, and the webcams confirmed it, so I quickly grabbed my camera gear and went there in the middle of the week for a few hours of morning nature walking and photography…
For more photographs (in different seasons and in bigger resolution) please visit the „Rotes Moor“ gallery…
South of Frankfurt near Stockstadt am Rhein there is an old winding section of the Rhein river where the Rhein was straitened many years ago… this now cut-off remaining Rhein loop is now a protected nature area where you can go for hours of walking or … photographing. Of course, this is not wilderness by any means, after all it sits right in the very populated Rhein-Main area, but still a bit of nature mostly left to its own development for many years now. You can still clearly see areas like the open plains in the middle of the loop that used to be used for farming, or meadows with fruit trees… and you mostly walk around the loop (on the inside) on a raised bank (almost invisible hidden as your walking path in a forest) that protects the plain in the center from high waters of the Rhein loop (at least that used to be its function)… We have been there a few times now, but have yet to see it in winter, with fog or snow…
For more photographs (in bigger resolution) please visit the „Out for a Walk“ galleries in the different seasons…
(Preface: This is more a travel blog including pictures of our trip… for purely landscape photos in bigger resolution format please go the Japan 2024 gallery…)
Finally… back to Japan – my „second home“ … this time after a long (corona) break again for a Ki-Aikido Worldcamp (in Osaka). But first – 8 days of beautiful Japan, its nature, landscapes, town and small villages, and its people. As you can see from the first picture, I didn’t travel alone but with two of my Aikido students. And we had a wonderful time! Sophia, being a videographer and photographer, was taking lots of photographs herself, but of course with a completely different way of seeing (for her it was the 5th visit to Japan, including a longer stay of half a year)… Andrea, who is a (mostly painting) artist and teashop owner, came to Japan for the first time – and she was having a blast! She looked (and most probably felt) like Alice in Wonderland … First, we went to the beautiful mountain town of Takayama:
With a one-day visit to the mountain village of Shirakawago, where we had the great fortune to witness the autumn matsuri (festival) at the local shrine:
On day 4, we drove (with our little rental mini-mini van) deeper into the Japanese Alps for two days of hiking into the Kamikochi area. For that you have to leave your car at one of the big parking lots just outside the areas‘ gates, and travel inside by bus service. We got of at Taishoike bus stop, to hike the rest of the way (11km) up the Azusa River valley.. on the way we saw Taishiro pond and marsh, the famous Kappa-bashi bridge, and beautiful woods alongside the river until we reached our Mountain lodge Tokusawa-en, which we had pre-booked many months before (autumn in Kamikochi is high-season, places book out quickly and are rather pricey, but it includes Japanese breakfast and dinner, and onsen)…
On the third day we hiked back, this time mostly on the other side of the river, to see the to-of-this-world Myojin pond, as well as a landscape that was more different on this side of the river than one might expect…
After taking the bus back out to the parking lot in the afternoon, we still had a 2-hours drive ahead of us though the Alps to its southern parts in the Kiso mountain area, to the old Nakasendo road town of Magome, where we had booked a beautiful old ryokan, including dinner of course like it used to be in the old days… (everything closes at 5 pm including all places for eating.. ) Whoever is still in town after dark (tourists I mean) is staying in a ryokan, and there you get dinner 🙂 Next day we hiked the old Nakasendo road, at least a small portion of it, which leads you over a mountain pass down to the next town of Tsumago. From there we took the (last) bus back to Magome..
On day 8 we had to leave the Japanese Alps already and made a stop-over at the biwa lake town of Hikone, where we visited its castle and garden… despite rather wet weather conditions… Then driving back to Osaka, to drop off our rental car… for 4 days in the big city… (where we also had our 3-day Ki-Aikido Worldcamp, and were meeting many old and new friends)
After the camp we still had 4 days left… so we went to the old capital: Kyoto (joined by my student Peter for one day)..
Kyoto is worth a visit anytime, but certainly in autumn! Here are some photos from Arashiyama, with Tenryu-ji temple, the famous bamboo forest, and a beautiful Katsura river valley/gorge. One of my favorite shrines in Kyoto is Kitano Tenman-gu (where you also find a great „flea“market in front of the south gate every 4th Friday of the month, if you arrive before 5pm, that is 😉
The last day in Kyoto was devoted fully to a trip to the old town of Nara (which was the capital of Japan until 1240 years ago before Kyoto became the capital).
What a trip! Knowing I would have no time for wildlife photography, I left my Olympus 100-400 at home, and took only the minimal gear of the OM-1 with 12-100 almost glued to it, only occasionally switched for the Pana-Leica 8-18. Plus the Kase magnetic filters, of course – of which I really only needed the polarizer, the ND filters are nowadays of no much use for me, since the OM-1 has built-in electronic ND up to ND64, which is, together with the 7+ stops of image stabilization, perfect even for waterfall shots handheld. The lightweight travel tripod I took along (thankfully my Fotopro X-Aircross 3 Carbon weighs in under 1 kg) I used only once – for the night photos in Magome town. Reminder to self: Next time only OM-1, 12-100, Polarizer, spare batteries, charger, not even sure I need the 8-18 ? Maybe I will switch that soon for the smaller and even lighter new Loawa 6mm F2 MFT… ? „All“ of that fits beautifully into the bottom compartment of my Mindshift Rotation 22L Rucksack. The slide-around feature works perfectly for quick access to all your stuff, without taking off the backpack! And the top compartment is big enough for some clothing for a 2-day hike to a mountain hut… what more could I ask for?
Sooo… when will I be back in Japan? I don’t know. I will go back, probably many more times, but I would like to visit in some other seasons, too. Winter would be great, maybe in Hokkaido, we have yet to see cherry blossoms in Japan… and Kyushu is also still on my list…
It’s been a while since we returned from our Scotland trip in June this year… but only now I found the inspiration to revisit the photographs and edit a few of them in black & white. I knew quite a few would lend themselves to black & white because of the moody and/or contrasty conditions we found ourselves in quite often – but I had taken none of these specifically in or for black & white. I was enjoying this trip so much, found myself really connecting to the landscape and the land… But on future outings I do plan to set my camera to black & white more often and deliberately photograph in black & white.
Also, I was still getting a feel for my new camera system I had just switched to shortly before. I am now enjoying a much lighted travel backpack with the Olympus OM-1, coupled with the wonderful 12-100/F4 lens… this set is literally only half the weight of what I used to carry (last fall in Shikoku I still had my Leica SL-2S with the 24-70/F2.8 lens). Looking at the photographs, I see nothing missing, but holding and using the new camera is simply a joy (as well as the reduced weight, as mentioned before). Of course I also had with me a rather lightweight wide angle zoom (8-18 Panasonic-Leica). My Olympus 100-400 is really only for wildlife (being a full frame equivalent of 200-800mm) and could stay in the car most of the time, as the 12-100 has plenty of reach for landscapes (being a 200mm equivalent)… Also my tripod was only used in the dimmest of conditions, and could stay in the car most of the time as well, as the camera’s IBIS of 7+ stops is really awesome (coupled with the lenses IS)…
Below are just some pictures, for more please visit the Scotland gallery…
It took me quite a while… but I have found more and more that letting a pile a pictures from an adventure sit for a while, it gives me a new fresh look at them and lets me choose the best pictures in a more efficient way. When I have just returned, the personal memories of how, when and where a picture was taken are still so overwhelming, that these feelings somewhat overpower the feelings that might emit from a picture when someone else is looking at it. And when I want to create a book, it is of course also for my own memory of the adventure to enjoy years later when looking through it, but it is foremost for other people, people who might be interested in Shikoku, or the O-Henro pilgrimage, yes, who might even be already planning it, or who have done it themselves already… but they can never have or have had the same experiences or feelings that I had when doing it… So a photograph might be meaningful to me for some reason, but it does not come across in the photograph at all when someone else looks at it. So in a sense, for a book the photograph must in itself convey something, and I find it easier to get a feeling for that when I allow myself some time before selecting them…
Long story short, the book was produced as a kind of paperback magazine, so it doesn’t become too thick, heavy and expensive. It has 220 pages, and is divided into five chapters: Getting there, Temple, Landscapes, Townscapes, and Conclusion. There is a little text here and there, but I want this more to be an inspiration for others who might be interested to do something like that themselves, or maybe a picture book that is beautiful to look through for people who have already done the Shikoku pilgrimage themselves. It is definitely not an information repository … those kinds of books and websites exist already.
Here is the link to buy a copy of the book as a paperback printed copy or as a digital pdf: Shikoku 88 Book
Okay, where to go now? Yoshino springs to mind, that’s close to Koyasan… a nice drive through the mountains, I went to see Kimpusen-ji, apparently a famous Buddhist temple, but for my taste it was a pure tourist attraction. A huge old main building, yes, but loads of tourists who were asked to pay 1600 Yen to walk a round inside it to see the treasures… what a change to my Shikoku experience… so I walked around the temple grounds and enjoyed the weather and the views.. The was a nice little Shinto shrine next to it, though, that I did visit, Yoshimizu Shrine, said to be beneficial for dogs, so many came with their little friends, a few brought these cuddle dogs that usually are driven around in strollers originally intended for human kids…
From there I went to Nara, to visit Kasuga-Taisha Shrine and Todai-ji Temple. Driving into this temple district of Nara I realized why there had been so many people on the Yoshino mountain, here were even more… it was a public holiday, the equivalent of Labour Day. I found it not annoying in any way, though, I had expected many people going to a place like Nara, and it was very interesting to see how Japanese spend their holiday… it seems all of them go to the big temples and shrines, as there also is usually beautiful landscaping and scenery, a little spirituality, can’t hurt, and lots and lots of indulgences for the culinary senses… which I enjoyed too..
The next day I went to Kyoto… Fushimi-Inari Shrine was one of my favorites last time I had been there, but this time we had 15 degrees and not 38, so I could walk the whole round under the many many Torii gates all the way to the top shrine on the mountain… It started at the main shrine at the bottom with loads and loads of people, but as I got further up, there were less and less people… so it was a quite enjoyable walk in this beautiful natural setting. From there I went to Toji-ji temple near Kyoto main train station, this was a definite on my list as this was Kobo Daishi’s (Kukai’s) home temple. Now it is still the headquarter of the Shingon Buddhist Sect, but the temple itself is like a museum for tourists. Koyasan is more the spiritual headquarters, I think, there is also the University for the education of new priests. But, at Toji-ji one could see Kukai’s old home, many important old statues, and in the museum also the two huge old mandala wall hangings of the Womb and Diamond realms, a core in Shingon teaching, as well as original text scrolls written by Kukai in the 9th century. Very interesting to see…
In the last afternoon I then spent 2 hours or so in a very nice Jazz Kissa „Train“ in southern Kyoto… Good music on a very old hifi system, a very nice owner – we chatted a lot, and very good coffee.. He also recommended a very nice Onsen, and he was right!
Today was my last full day… which I started off in Arashiyama, in the northwestern corner of Kyoto. The changeable weather made for good photo light, including a beautiful rainbow, and the Tenryu-ji temple was exceptionally beautiful with gorgeous fall colors.. The afternoon I spent at another Jazz Kissa, „Murra“, in eastern Kyoto. Very nice place, nice owner, nice music and hifi system (also very old), and a very tasty homemade curry with rice, plus fresh orange juice, plus, later, a gourmet coffee… In the evening I went to a Roadside station in the mountains near Kameoka, which also has a nice onsen… my last onsen for this year 🙁 but it was good 🙂
This is also my last blog post from this trip… tomorrow it is driving back to Osaka, handing back my rental car, and then off to the airport… the online check-in is already done…
It was a great, great trip! Which I will not forget for the rest of my life. So many great experiences, in so many ways… Thank you, dear readers, for your interest, if you have made it so far to read this… maybe, hopefully, I have inspired one or two of you in some way to do something similar, whatever it may be…
What an intense day! The drive from my last overnight place on Shikoku back towards the main island of Honshu… and then up to Koyasan… the „headquarter“ mountain of Shingon Buddhism, the sect that Kukai founded, the reason people do the Shikoku pilgrimage…
The drive included going back over the beautiful bridges near Naruto and then Akashi, but then came endless highrised highways and bridges, sometimes 4 highways on top of each other and/or crossing each other, flanked by endless city scapes, industrial areas, harbors, container terminals, through the endless stretch of Kobe, Shin-Osaka, Osaka… until finally it got more „normal“ coming into Wakayama prefecture … and then leaving the highways behind, going into the mountains… and then up into the Koya mountain range…
Arriving here around 2:30 PM was perfect… I could talk to the very helpful and friendly Patrick at the tourist information (I remember talking to him 5 years ago when I was last here), could go to the Koyasan Museum, which was free today, and then experience a beautiful sunset around the Daimon, main entry gate of Koyasan at its western entrance…
Strolling back through the main Danjo Garan temple complex while the night was falling… and now I sit here in my van on the parking lot next to the visitor center, where (I asked) I can stay overnight, for free (yes, despite being such a touristy place, the parking lots are free), and the toilet/bathroom is heated! Luxury! But needed, Koyasan is colder than Shikoku, around Danjo Garan I saw small left over piles of snow…
The night was cold! I did manage in my car, but I wanted to drive to Okunoin at 5 in the morning to be there for 5:50 to witness the morning ceremonies, but when I woke up I realized, no way (as the rental car also had no scratcher), all windows were heavily frozen on the outside and the inside. So I went back into my sleeping bag, stood up at 6:30 for kombini breakfast and hot coffee, and then walked calmly to Okunoin, taking many pictures on the way in the rising sun… Okunoin is a very old, very large, very famous, but for me most importantly a very beautiful and atmospheric cemetery, a coupe kilometers long, and leads up to the temple where reportedly Kukai is still sitting in eternal meditation. This is where every Ohenro goes to finish their pilgrimage… What an experience. After the whole Shikoku round, and now here. I sat, after the usual ceremonies, a while longer in front of his mausoleum in meditation… there was no-one else around for quite a while… beautiful.
With the final calligraphies in my book, from Kongobuji, the Shingon main temple, and the Okunoin, my pilgrimage is now finished. And as I was walking along Koyasan, I realized that there was nothing more here for me to do. Also, I had been here twice before, each time for 3-4 days, so everything felt familiar. And it was so full of tourists! So few pilgrims. It is funny how relative our perception is, isn’t it? A few years ago, during our normal vacation travels, I felt Koyasan to be spiritual. Now, after Shikoku, it feels touristy. Strange. Also, the temple lodgings were all fully booked, the few vacancies went for 300€ and up on booking.com… so I could not last minute book into a temple lodging, and it is so cold at night, and that with no public onsen… Long story short, I went down from Koyasan this afternoon, near Hashimoto, went to an Onsen, and have now parked at a nearby roadside station.
I have only a few days left. I think I will spend these more in nature, the forests and mountains near Yoshino and Nara, and maybe Lake Biwa… before I go back to Osaka on Sunday…
What a beautiful day! Sunday, early morning kombini breakfast, and then one of the first at temple 80, Kokubunji, a temple situated in a quite big pine tree forest, one could say, but surrounded by farms and townhouses. A nice atmosphere there in the early morning. Then I visited two mountain temples, 81 Shiromineji, and later on the other side of the same mountain 82, Negoroji. Both beautiful in their own way, very different in setting and character, though. The pictures cannot transport the feeling of being there, though, the largeness of the setting on the mountainside, the huge trees, the atmosphere. It’s Sunday, and as it got later in the morning towards the middle of the day, lots of families with kids, couples and older people flocked to both temples. It seemed more like a nice day out together for them, the Ohenros were the minority today, although I saw many.
Afterwards I went to the top of the mountain I was already on, to a rest area that used to have a restaurant and viewing area, but all that has long been abandoned… kind of lost places feeling… the nice view over the Seto Inland Sea opened up only on the drive down the mountain to Cape Osaki… From there, I was feeling a bit hungry by now, I drove into the outskirts of Takamatsu, one of the 3 major cities on Shikoku. For the most part these cities are expansive areas of small town/village structures, though, so the feeling and driving is as usual on Shikoku. Only when you come into the city center it is like a European city, with 2-4 lanes per direction and taller buildings… My lunch place was a small Ramen restaurant still in the outskirts, though, and it was delicious – I don’t dare to say it anymore, it cost only 4 Euros…
Then it was time for a proper Sunday stroll for myself – and I went to Ritsurin Garden in downtown Takamatsu, one of the most famous big landscape gardens in Japan. Which unfortunately also was the plan of many other people, including several bus tour groups with Chinese tourists… The garden is big, though, so no problem at all..
Of course I finished the day with another temple in the evening, temple 83, Ichinomiyaji, which is a small town temple, quite simple compared to the ones before. In addition to the usual temple halls and features it has an interesting new concrete hall as well, which we could not enter, though.. Then, it was just before 5 PM, it was getting dark… time to drive to my daily onsen, which this time was a small town sento bathhouse with a tiny parking lot, and then I found my space for the night at a nearby roadside station. Maybe because its Sunday, but tonight there are more than 20 camper vehicles here…
Today is Monday, November 20, day 26… which started with a beautiful sunrise (but the camper location was not conductive to a nice photograph, and my camping neighbors, an elderly Japanese couple, treated me with a hot coffee and 2 little croissants). I drove up a little mountain, Yashimasan, to temple 84, Yashimaji, which was beautiful in the early morning sun. Despite it being Monday morning, there was a bus group with Japanese pilgrims already, but I find that always interesting, as they have 2-3 monks with them, and the whole group chants nicely together, which adds to the atmosphere.. These groups consist of mostly elderly people, a few can obviously not walk very well any more, and the group seems to have fun together, too.. I should see this group more than once today… I had a long photo walk around the mountain peak, there were quite a few viewpoints in various directions towards Takamatsu and the Seto Inland Sea…
After same kombini coffee and breakfast it was time to drive up the next mountain on the neighboring peninsula, towards temple 85, Yakuriji. That temple lies up quite a steep slope, in sections up to 27%, so they have made a parking lot half way up, and from there you can take a cable car (or walk). I took the cable car up, and later walked down. The temple is just beautiful. It also has a nice statue with a wide view of the surrounding land.. After the walk down, it was noon, and right there was a little restaurant, where I had some udon with tempura on the side..
Temple 86, Shidoji, lies near the coast on flat land, and is quite large. But how strange… lots of green, but apparently not tended by a gardener, quite wild, in places like a jungle, dotted here and there are temple buildings and statues, even a big wooden pagoda, but some in desperate need of repair.. which they do, there were construction people working on a temple hall, on the bell tower, and there were heavy machines… so it is being worked on, but man, it needs a lot more. It almost looks like it was abandoned and is now being restored, I don’t know.. But the sheer amount of green gave it a nice atmosphere nonetheless, it felt almost natural… so who knows, maybe that’s the way they want it?
In stark contrast, temple 87, Nagaoji, had in the part that is accessible to pilgrims/the public only a big empty area and the three obligatory buildings, Hondo, Daishido, and the temple office. No green at all.. well, at the office there was a little, and then you could kind of see that behind there were more temple buildings, apparently also with plants..
Now, as you can see by the numbers… the end of the pilgrimage is drawing near… only one to go… As it was not even 3 yet, I decided to do it and finish the temples today. So I went to temple 88, Okuboji, which was up in the mountains again, and with the late afternoon sun it was nice up there. There was also a bus group again, one of the elder men in the group asked me how long the Ohenro had taken me, congratulated me… and as the group was getting ready to chant at the Daishido hall, I used that opportunity and simply joined them… I did the chanting at the Hondo after that, no problem.. Strange, to now have all the stamps and calligraphies in that little pilgrims book… in the end it went so fast… I can almost not believe that it should be over now… After the usual onsen I am now sitting here in my van at a roadside station by a beach park… Now that I’m finished with the temple round already, I have a few days left, and Koyasan is so beautiful and nice with all the temples and trees… maybe I will go there for a few days to round out and properly finish the pilgrimage…
What a day. It started with a little drizzle, when I walked up from my sleeping place through the forest up the stairs to temple 71, Iyadaniji. A very mystic atmosphere, and a great mountain temple, with several buildings spread over a few levels on the side of a mountain. At the time I was the only pilgrim there, and could enjoy the sounds of the rain, the birds, the temple bell… but the highlight was, that one could walk into the Daishido hall (shoes off, of course), and sit there when reciting the heart sutra, after hitting a big meditation bell that was sitting there on its cushion and stand.. and then, the monk motioned me to go behind the altar, where there was another room, carved into the mountain like a cave.. with statues of Kukai, a bell, incense holder… so the same ritual there, almost inside the cave. What a magical experience. I did take a photo, but only show below the side view into the room, not into the cave itself… for that you have to go there yourself 😉 When I came out of this temple hall, it started pouring down. What an atmosphere, in that setting…
Then the obligatory kombini breakfast, and onto temples 72 and 73. I walked from temple 72 to 73 and back, as they are quite close together. Oh, what I wanted to tell earlier but forgot… back around temple 60 or so I started reading the English version of the heart sutra instead of the Japanese one… even though I knew the content more or less, it is very different when reciting words again and again that you actually understand! I must say, it is deepening my experience at the temples, for sure.
Okay, then I drove to temple 74… yes, it was a temple day. By now the sun had made its appearance, and it was almost T-Shirt weather, but a little chilly with the increasing wind… When arriving at temple 75, Zentsuji, I knew it was a big complex, as it is Kukai’s birthplace, and the town, Zentsuji, developed around it, so.. consequently, there was a big parking lot, with entrance gate and staff, several buses parked and numerous cars, and when entering the temple grounds, it was clear that this is a huge complex… groups of, I guess, priests came with suitcases, other groups of men in suits and women in costumes walked into a big building for an event… the main hall, Hondo, is a huge wooden hall with a big golden Buddha statue in it…
After some lunch at a simple restaurant next to the temple, I had a Buddhist pilgrimage break, and went to visit Kotohira Shrine. Which itself is also a huge complex – built on the slope of a whole mountain. The Omotesando street lined with shops, restaurants and cafes leads up to it, over several hundred steps of stairs, which then continued inside the actual shrine, with Torii gates, long lines of stone lanterns, huge shrine buildings, and then more stairs up the mountain for the next level with shrine buildings, and further up to the next level… And there were a lot of people there, school groups, company groups, and many other people, young and old, couples, and lots of tourists, also many Chinese ones.. While in the shrine, the rain got heavier, then hail, then the sun came out again, and on the way down again rain, hail, storm and finally lightning and thunder, with storm and hail and rain… so the troops scattered, and somehow disappeared… I went back to the car, and drove to my nightly onsen and sleeping camper car park…
Tomorrow I will continue with temple 76 and on… which makes me realize, that this pilgrimage is slowly but surely coming to an end… As I am one day ahead of my schedule, and that schedule was very relaxed in the end anyway, I am thinking of going for the last few days to Koyasan again (as one should do anyway to properly finish the pilgrimage)… We will see..
During the night it continued with storm, rain and I guess hail… it sounded heavy, I just hoped that the hail bits were not getting bigger to not turn my rental van into a big golf ball.. That luckily did not happen, but the storm and rain did not want to stop.. it was raining diagonally while I was having breakfast. This time I was sitting in the kombini’s sitting area, charging up my laptop and powerbank fully for once. When I drive, I have various things to charge, my phone, for navigation, the wifi-router for internet, and the camera batteries so I can keep taking pictures…
So my day at temple 76 started a little bit later. It was still very windy and chilly, though, and while waiting in the line for the calligraphy in our books, a Japanese Ohenro showed me pictures on her phone from this morning with snow on the street. Temple 77 was a small and simple town temple.
I then went so see Marugame castle, on a hill with a moat and lots of surrounding stone walls.. and a nice (stormy) view from the top level, but I did not see the concrete tower structure from inside. Then came temple 78, where it was so windy that lighting a candle or incense stick was impossible, so I decided to take a sightseeing break… Temple 78 had a nice feature, though, a kind of underground crypt with thousands of little golden buddha and bodhisattva statues, once a a while a bigger one, with lamps and incense… all very dark and mystical… there I could light my incense sticks and put them in the holder bowl…
So, I went to the seaside, to a nice cafe for lunch, overlooking the Seto Inland Sea and the Seto Bridge… and then next door into the Shikoku Aquarium. Very nice, and lots of (young) people, lots of young couples, and families with kids, it is Saturday after all…
Finally I closed the day with the last temple for today, temple 79, but this was a very simple, almost inactive feeling temple. Had it not been for the old ladies and men doing the evening cleanup, I would have thought it was abandoned… there were other Ohenros too, though, so I felt reassured that I was in the right place… Just my feeling… but as the heart sutra suggests… all that is emptiness, so don’t worry be happy… Now I am really happy, after a nice soak in the local onsen, and finally setting up camp for the night…